Jeffrey Toobin - True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump

This book is based principally on my coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign and the first three-plus years of the Trump administration. For this book, I interviewed more than a hundred people, including members of Muellers staff, subjects of and witnesses in Muellers investigation, Trumps legal team, Trump administration officials, members of Congress of both parties, congressional staffers, and defense lawyers. The interviews were on a not-for-attribution basis; that is, I could use the information provided but without quoting directly or identifying the source.

The documentary record of these investigations is already enormous. The Mueller Report was an indispensable resource. Benjamin Wittes and his colleagues at lawfareblog.com performed a tremendous service to me and other researchers by posting all of the court filings in the Mueller investigation. Lawfare also did a useful timeline of the Trump-Ukraine scandal. Ryan Goodman and Steve Vladeck and their colleagues at justsecurity.org also posted a valuable timeline on Trump and Ukraine as well as a collection of public documents related to the impeachment proceedings.

I also steeped myself in the coverage of these investigations in the news media. I am particularly grateful for the extraordinary work of the journalists at The New York Times and The Washington Post. At the Times, as I note in the text, the work of Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt was especially important. At the Post, I thank the White House team and especially Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig for their terrific book, A Very Stable Genius. In longer-form journalism, Id like to recognize my colleague Adam Entouss profiles of Hunter Biden and Yuriy Lutsenko in The New Yorker and Franklin Foers profile of Paul Manafort in The Atlantic. As the story unfolded, I was fortunate to profile Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone, Michael Cohen, and Adam Schiff in The New Yorker. As for books, I have inhaled the already vast Trump literature, but wish to point out my debt to Bob Woodwards Fear, James Comeys A Higher Loyalty, and Andrew McCabes The Threat. My thanks also to the proprietors of the invaluable trumptwitterarchive.com. Other secondary sources appear in the notes to each chapter.

Anyone in the United States (or, say, the world) would recognize that these last months, as the coronavirus descended, have been an extraordinary time to complete and publish a book. At this stage in the process, I always take pleasure in thanking the many people who joined me in the endeavor. However, I realize that my circle of gratitude needs to be a great deal wider than for past books. This time, of all times, I need to thank the people in the news and book publishing business who run the presses, who work in the warehouses, who drive the trucks. From my television life, I am also aware of contributions of the people you dont seethe photojournalists in the field and the producers in the control roomand I salute them as well. In the same spirit, I express my gratitude to the folks who grow and deliver the food, and the grocery store workers who sell it, and everyone else who brings us what we order online (as well as our mail), so that authors and journalists can keep doing what we do. Today, work outside the home is heroism, and I thank all the heroes who made publication of this book possible. Closer to my quarantine home, many thanks from my family to Mike Luzi and the staff of the IGA in Sherman, Connecticut.

At Doubleday headquarters, I continue to have the good fortune to work with Bill Thomas, my editor, who steered this book to publication in such difficult circumstances. I am also grateful to the entire team at Doubleday, which included Todd Doughty (again!), copy editor Ingrid Sterner, Andy Hughes (head of a swift production), Bette Alexander (again!), Lydia Buechler, Michael Collica, Khari Dawkins, Chris DuFault, John Fontana, Michael Goldsmith, Kathy Hourigan, Lorraine Hyland, and Beth Meister. Julie Tate, the fact-checking legend, graced me with her efforts. Thanks also to Kris Dahl, Esther Newberg, Phyllis Grann, Ron Bernstein, John and Jordan Davis, and, once more, to Professor John Q. Barrett.

I remain grateful, too, to my colleagues at The New Yorker, especially David Remnick and Dorothy Wickenden, who have been my friends and bosses for many years. At CNN, where I spent so much time with this story, I thank Jeff Zucker and my remarkable and dedicated colleagues there.

Amy McIntoshwho is my wife for better and for worse and, during the virus crisis, also for lunch!edited the first draft of this book with her usual intelligence and grace. I treasure the privilege of sharing my life with her. Unexpectedly, and not exactly voluntarily, Adam Toobin joined us for much of his first year of law school. I hope he was as happy to have us as we were to have him.

A word about the dedication. I began my professional life as a lawyer and did not come to journalism until I was in my thirties. Perhaps because of this relatively late start, Ive always felt a special gratitude for being welcomed into the field and for the chance to make a living this way. In recent years Ive been especially lucky because this has been a difficult time for journalists. The businessespecially at newspapers and magazineshas been rough. To be honest, I dont have any particular idea of how to turn things around financially. Its not my field.

But I do want to say something about the valuein something other than moneyof what we do. A defense of journalism sounds today, almost automatically, like an attack on Donald Trump. And it is true that the president has demeaned our work like no other figure in modern American history. Trump has used the epithets fake news and enemies of the people so often that theyve become almost routine, part of the background hum of politics in the United States. But my purpose in saluting my colleagues is broader than simply standing up to Trumps attacks. The work we do is indispensable in a free nation; that was true before Trumps presidency and will be true after he is gone. Journalism matters not just because we speak truth to this particular president but because democracy will always require an informed electorate. Journalists, like everyone else, are imperfect; we make mistakes. But our countryand the worldis better off because of the work that we continue to do. Im proud to be a journalist and to stand with my colleagues at this precarious moment.

June 2020